TVtrip Raises €7 Million More For Hotel Video Reviews

Posted: 02 Feb 2009 03:41 AM PST

Paris-based TVtrip has scored €7 million (nearly $9 million) in venture capital funding on top of its previous $4.8 million Series A round, bringing the total of capital invested in the company up to a healthy $13.8 million (excluding the undisclosed angel funding the company raised to get started). Previous investors Balderton Capital and Partech International participated in the second round and were joined by AGF Private Equity this time.

TVtrip is essentially a guide for hotels from around the globe, but centered around video reviews and enhanced with third-party reviews from sites like HotelClub and Venere. Visitors are offered unbiased, professionally produced video reviews for hotels and get to book straight away through affiliate partnerships with booking sites.

So far, the guide covers 157 destinations and 2900 hotels worldwide, and has built up a directory of about 9800 videos.

The service's main selling point in my opinion is the rich video player, which lets you jump to different rooms from one and the same hotel, offers a direct booking link, lets you view the location on a map inside the interface, switch to a photo gallery, etc.

Ever since TVtrip launched, I've been wondering why they didn't offer a way for people to embed / share videos. I used to think TVtrip simply wanted to position itself as the premier destination site for video reviews for hotels, without the option to share its content on other places, but I was wrong. Co-founder and CMO Marc Pfohl tells me they did actually share embedding functionality on demand, and that they will be opening up more when they launch their next version, due March 10. The reason it took so long, he says, is because they wanted to be able to track where the videos appear with great detail.

TVtrip was founded by 4 ex-managers of Expedia Europe and backed by former Expedia CEO. The startup faces competition from (the equally French) Trivop, Tripr.tv,Travelmedia, Hotelly and Travelistic.